[MadQuack]

Hi, here's an overly long introduction to go with my first post: I'm new to FreeSpace Open, but not the FreeSpace franchise. Back in the late 90's, I really wanted Descent 2; it seemed awesome and my parents wanted to get it for my birthday, but no store had it on their shelves. One day I was out shopping with my dad at an Office Depot (not exactly known as a gaming retailer now, much less then) and saw Descent: FreeSpace sitting next to Windows 98 on the shelf and bundled with Descent 2, for $10. I had no idea what FreeSpace was, and frankly, I didn't care; D2 for $10! I soon found D2 to be over-hyped, but completely fell in love with FreeSpace... The rest is history.

Anyway, I recently made the switch to Open and everything is set up great. My problem is that I've had the save file corrupt twice. The first time happened halfway through the FS1 campaign and the second just now, after beating FS1 and over halfway through ST:R. When this happens, the game freezes upon attempting to load the profile. Are there any ways to recover them? I'd just edit them myself, but when I check with wordpad, everything seems about right except editing it is impossible because of special characters used.

Also, my file extensions are .CSG; I read in your wiki that those have been phased out for .CS2, how do I make the switch to the newer format?

[niffiwan]

To start with, it'd be useful to see your log file from when FSO hangs, there are a few known issues that could cause this and the log will help us give you the right advice, so:

Please post your fs2_open.log file.  Instructions on how to do this can be found in this post.

Secondly, to edit the pilotfiles you need a hex editor.  I'm not sure what's available on Windows for this, but I'm sure a google search will find some options.  In addition, if you look in my sig there's a link to hints about how to hex edit a pilot to fix one specific issue.  *warning* back up your pilot before trying to modify it, it's very easy to break it by mistake

Thirdly, the original (retail) pilot files used .csg/plr for the campaign/pilot files respectively, located in data/players/single & data/players/multi.  At some point the SCP (I think?  Or was it for FS2?) changed these to .cs2/pl2 located in the two locations mentioned already, plus in data/players/single/inferno & data/players/multi/inferno for "inferno" builds.  And most recently with 3.6.19/3.7.0RC? the files have changed back to .csg/.plr, except in data/players now. 

And lastly:

[MadQuack]

Yeah, I have a hex editor, am familiar with their use, and backed up the save as soon as I realize something went wrong.

Here's the log:

main_hall_init() was passed a blank mainhall name, loading first available mainhall.
ntdll.dll! ZwWaitForSingleObject + 21 bytes
kernel32.dll! WaitForSingleObjectEx + 67 bytes
kernel32.dll! WaitForSingleObject + 18 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_0_RC2-DEBUG.exe! SCP_DumpStack + 354 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_0_RC2-DEBUG.exe! Warning + 416 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_0_RC2-DEBUG.exe! main_hall_init + 217 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_0_RC2-DEBUG.exe! game_enter_state + 345 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_0_RC2-DEBUG.exe! gameseq_set_state + 310 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_0_RC2-DEBUG.exe! game_process_event + 134 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_0_RC2-DEBUG.exe! gameseq_process_events + 152 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_0_RC2-DEBUG.exe! game_main + 782 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_0_RC2-DEBUG.exe! WinMain + 330 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_0_RC2-DEBUG.exe! __tmainCRTStartup + 358 bytes
fs2_open_3_7_0_RC2-DEBUG.exe! WinMainCRTStartup + 15 bytes
kernel32.dll! BaseThreadInitThunk + 18 bytes
ntdll.dll! RtlInitializeExceptionChain + 99 bytes
ntdll.dll! RtlInitializeExceptionChain + 54 bytes

Mainhall... As in the "Menu"? If that's the case, it definitely makes sense as to why it'd crash. I found FS1 Open strange because The "hangar menu" didn't change to the Bastion's after the Galatea was destroyed, as it did in FS1 Retail. However, it DID change to the second deck after the previous mission that I beat in ST:R.

Do you think the value was changed to an invalid one somehow? What would be the correct value?

Edit: I'm not sure what happened, but the profile now works with 3.7.0 (RC2). I was previously using 3.6.9 SSE2.

[niffiwan]

The mainhall message is a warning, not a fatal error.  You should be able to click continue or OK to get past that point and get to the real crash.

Also, that's not actually the log file   It'll be called fs2_open.log and by default it should be in fso/data (unless you're on Vista or more recent and your FSO install is in Program Files, in which case check the link to find the real location of the log)

Here's an example of what the start of the log looks like:

Code: [Select]

==========================================================================
DEBUG SPEW: No debug_filter.cfg found, so only general, error, and warning
categories can be shown and no debug_filter.cfg info will be saved.
==========================================================================
FreeSpace version: 3.6.12
Passed cmdline options:
  -spec_exp 15
  -ogl_spec 20
  -spec_static 1.5
  -spec_point 1.2
  -spec_tube 1.5
  -ambient_factor 35
  -env
  -missile_lighting
  -glow
  -spec
  -normal
  -3dshockwave
  -post_process
  -orbradar
  -rearm_timer
  -targetinfo
  -3dwarp
  -warp_flash
  -snd_preload
  -mod bemcavalgar,fsport-mediavps,fsport,mediavps_3612
  -window
(etc)


[MadQuack]

Ah, how stupid of me. Anyway, it's working now with all the builds, including the SSE2 one that I would prefer to use. If it does happen again, I'll be sure to post it here so it may later be of help for people using these pre-final builds.

Also, upon further reading I found that these new builds have a habit of eating up profiles; this shouldn't be a problem with the current release.